Eleanor Smeal Announces 1994 Feminist of the Year Awards

Press release from the Feminist Majority Foundation. 3 Jan 1995

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 -- Eleanor Smeal, president of the
Feminist Majority Foundation, announced the winners of the fifth annual
Feminist of the Year Awards. These awards are intended to encourage
people to speak out for feminism and honor those who risked their jobs,
careers or educations, made personal sacrifices, or used their
high-ranking positions to bring about women's equality over the past
year or over their lifetimes.

This year two of the Feminist
Majority Foundation's Feminists of the Year are women who led the call
for women's worldwide empowerment and reproductive rights at the United
Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in
Cairo, Egypt. Dr. Nafis Sadik, general secretary of the ICPD, worked to
place the empowerment of women at the center of the population debate;
and Gro Harlem Brundtland, prime minister of Norway, spoke out in favor
of reproductive rights at the ICPD in response to the Catholic Church
and fundamentalist Muslim opposition.

"Dr. Sadik and Prime
Minister Brundtland are in stark contrast to TIME Magazine's Man of the
Year -- Pope John Paul II," said Smeal. "The pope tried to obstruct the
International Conference on Population and Development with the abortion
issue. However, the work of Sadik, Brundtland and women's organizations
succeeded in putting the advancement of women at the center of the
debate to stabilize the world's population while recognizing for the
first time unsafe abortion as a world public health problem. Sadik and
Brundtland are true 'moral forces' working for the equality of all human
beings, unlike the pope, who chooses to ignore the sufferings of
millions of women from unwanted pregnancies."

Other 1994
Feminists of the Year are: Chilean feminist writer Isabel Allende, for
her portrayal of strong women writers and her feminist activism; Asian
Immigrant Women Advocates, for working to end the exploitation of women
immigrant workers; Dandy Barrett- Witty and Bruce Barrett, daughter and
son of slain volunteer clinic escort James Barrett, who have both spoken
out against anti- abortion violence; Rep. Don Edwards, for his
leadership on women's rights during his three decades in Congress;
Atlanta Police Chief Beverly Harvard, the first African-American woman
to head a big- city police department, for breaking the glass ceiling
for women and African-Americans in police; abortion clinic owner Susan
Hill, who runs clinics in remote areas in the face of continuous threats
of violence; the first lesbian or gay member of the California
legislature, Sheila James Kuehl; Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin, for
continuing to promote women's rights despite receiving death threats;
the late Winn Newman, for his pioneering leadership in the field of
comparable worth and pregnancy discrimination; Edouard Sakiz and
Catherine Euvrard of Roussel Uclaf, for breaking the logjam on
introduction of RU 486 to the United States; and Rena Weeks, for setting
a precedent that companies cannot tolerate sexual harassment without
paying a hefty price.

------ Editor's Note: Full descriptions of the 1994 Feminist of
the Year Award recipients are available by contacting the Feminist
Majority Foundation. Interviews with some of the recipients can be
arranged and some photos can be provided. The Feminist Majority
Foundation is an education, research and action organization dedicated
to achieving equality for women in all sectors of society.